


Regrets

by MercySewerPyro



Series: Here There Be Dragons [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post Episode: s07e12 Victory and Death, Post-Order 66, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25093879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercySewerPyro/pseuds/MercySewerPyro
Summary: "This story happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it."At the end of everything, she returns.
Series: Here There Be Dragons [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674430
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	Regrets

As the first snowflakes fall on an unnamed moon, the first pinpricks of white painting the dust, black steps into the steely gray of an incoming storm. What was not there a moment ago is now there again, a returning sentinel to an unmarked grave. The wind is not yet howling, the blizzard that will bury this place not yet picked up; she is here in the space between moments, caught between. Instead it moves around her, sending white flakes spiraling and the chill biting at sleek armour: a soft chorus that seems to whisper  _ ‘How many? How many?’ _

‘How many’ indeed. How many times has she walked this place, come to stand in this very spot? How many times has she breached the gutted thing ahead of her, a fruitless search for survivors hidden in its now-broken majesty? A symbol of what was, broken in an instant. Only the gods know how many times she has stared at the rows upon rows, grasping for scraps of a broken past.

There is nothing here for the living except regrets and dead men.

Regrets. Force knows she has many. Here she wears them like a mourning shroud, a cloak: it’s an ugly and tattered thing, bitter with age, spilled out into the dirt like tears and blood. Coming back never changes anything. The corpse of an era forever lies both behind and ahead, until all she can taste is the choking ash. But after everything, she doesn’t regret leaving. What she regrets, is that she left alone.

Staring over the markers, the defiant ‘we were here’ that will soon be drowned in white, she knows she won’t find what she always seems to look for: the glimpse of gold, the markings of a pair she lost long before the galaxy was. One may have been saved from his fate at the horror of Umbara (a trade well worth it, she reflects), but time was vicious, and time would not have spared them. If she had known, if she had played her cards right, she would have taken them with her. But they never would have accepted.

The truth is, she will never know their true fates. She hopes, deep in her heart, that they escaped. That Ryloth welcomed them and their fierce protectiveness, and they fought free. She knows that the universe is hardly ever that kind.

It was not kind to her own Legion.

Gloved hands slowly reach for a blue-marked helmet, brushing snowflakes off of the Republic cog that stares up at her. It is a futile effort. The howling storm will come in time, consuming every sign of life that had been. Like the Empire - like the Order that destroyed everything - it is inevitable, and that symbol of what once was will be devoured by the frost. Her siblings will not be remembered; she knows how this story goes.  _ He _ comes and takes what is useful to him, but there will never be a glance spared to what was once hers. Not here. Never here. He chose his side and left them all to die, in body, in mind, in spirit.

For one, impulsive moment, she pulls the helmet from its impromptu marker, holding it close to her chest. A lifeline. A memorial. Pure Mando’a no longer fills her lungs as much as it used to, mutated with years and a world beyond, but here she can offer this: a list, memorized with time. Ticking off the names of the sleeping brothers beneath her, one by one.

Not gone, merely marching far away.

She wishes she believed that.

But she has a second whisper, so soft as to be lost in the wind as she clutches that helmet to herself; it is personal, it is sacred, it is in a language these troopers never knew. These rows upon rows were her own, her family, her flesh and blood, and she left them behind. A trade: one life for thousands more, even as she gave up the blue and white for the unending black- A trade that meant nothing in the end. It is a memorial, and it is a plea for forgiveness.

_ “But the Void that destroys is the same as the Void that creates; all things end in time, but all things shall begin again.” _

That one, she believes.

Everything ended in a single decision, over and over: she took an oath that led her into the dark, and a bastard on his silver throne broke the galaxy in three words. It was decided. It was done. The war was lost.

She lifts the helmet from her chest, slowly, carefully, to stare down at the visor. At the eyepieces that would never again hide life underneath, at the small stain of dried blood crusted on the rim. She breathes out. The tears roll down her face, hidden in black, hidden in a guise that would fool anyone who came looking.

The way is shut. The path is broken.

She presses her forehead to this helmet’s own, to Jesse’s own, and weeps. There are no apologies she can give, no catharsis that can be given. There is only the wind, picking up around her, and the graves of all she left behind.

She can never go home.

But hadn’t she begun again? Wreathed in teeth and claws, she had taken that oath, that trade. A predator among predators, a death in the dark. She had reinvented herself a thousand different ways, a thousand different times, from the name she had shed to the marks of red across smooth black armour. It is the same conclusion she pulls every time, the only result she can receive. The tears roll down her face, again and again, but there is truth in her memorial.

Everything will end.

With the reverence of a last survivor, she places the helmet of what had once been a friend back upon the blaster jutting from the ground. Already she is surrounded by the bleak white, and already she knows her time comes to a close. This place will move on without her. Everything happened so long ago, in this galaxy far, far away. Nothing can be changed.

She pulls her helmet off, and wipes away her tears. There is nothing left but to turn away. To leave what was hers behind once more.

Everything has ended. But the future still lies ahead of her, and it cannot be ignored. She is needed, and that need will take her home- To a home that is not her first, a second carved out with time and tenacity. This chapter has finished. This saga has closed. Everything ends.

But everything begins, too.

**Author's Note:**

> It was time to return to some of my odder work, with a story about grief.
> 
> But if you know which fic her second memorial has been seen in before, then you might have just acquired a clue. :P


End file.
